Tornabuoni Arrives at the Art Basel Inner Sanctum with Four of Fontana’s Fine di Dio Works

With Frieze and TEFAF fading in the rear-view mirror, its already time to start stirring interest in Art Basel, the global art fair circuit’s premiere event and the lynchpin of the ArtBasel tripod of fairs. For galleries with ambitions to be destinations for the world’s wealthiest collectors working one’s way up for Art Basel’s outlier fairs and getting into the inner sanctum of Basel itself is a long journey.

Melanie Gerlis announces in her Financial Times column that Tornabuoni is making a statement to mark its arrival in the Swiss enclave:

Tornabuoni gallery has pulled together four of Lucio Fontana’s rare, late “La Fine di Dio” (“The End of God”) works — large-scale, punctured oval works made by the Argentina-born Italian artist between 1963 and 1964. These pieces, of which only 38 exist, were initially called “Le Uova” (“The Eggs”) by Fontana and have proved to be the biggest hitters at recent auctions. The four highest prices paid publicly for works by the artist have been for “Fine di Dio” pieces, according to Artnet, most recently $29.2m (including fees) for a pierced yellow version in November 2015. For Basel, Tornabuoni has two white, one pink and one green with glitter versions of the eggs. Those that are for sale are priced about $30m.